Fonna Forman (PhD University of Chicago, Political Science) is founding director of the UCSD Center on Global Justice. She is a political theorist best known for her revisionist work on 18th century Scottish economist, Adam Smith, recuperating the ethical, social, spatial and public dimensions of his thought. She is author of Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy (Cambridge, 2010), and many essays on Smith’s relevance for contemporary debates on ethics, globalization, urbanization and public culture. Since 2009 she has served as Editor of the Adam Smith Review, the premier international journal of Smith’s thought.

Forman’s research has evolved in increasingly ‘grounded’ ways, engaging the intersection of ethics, public policy and the city – including human rights at the urban scale, climate justice, border ethics and equitable urbanization in the global south. Recent publications include a volume with Amartya Sen on critical interventions in global justice theory, a volume with long-time research partner Teddy Cruz on urban informality, and thematic papers on cross-border collaboration, municipal cosmopolitanism, citizenship culture, and climate migration.